Until recently, I regarded the airport check-in question: “Do you have any infants travelling with you?” as being obviously absurd. Of course I don't have any infants travelling with me. Why would I do that? Why would anyone do that? As far as I was concerned, it was like asking if I planned on, say, deliberately contracting testicular elephantitis.

Then I became a father - a father who lives in Los Angeles, 6,000 miles away from his parents and 3,000 miles away from his in-laws. And now I always have an infant travelling with me. All things considered, I think I'd rather have the elephantitis.

By travelling, of course, I mean flying - which, these days, is bad enough. Higher fares, fewer aircraft, more delays, less legroom, worse food, fear of terrorism, fear of incompetent maintenance staff, fear of entering the microscopic lavatory after the relieved-looking fat man in seat 42B - it all adds up to ensure a horrific experience, no matter what your cabin class or destination. At least with the right combination of prescription drugs and in-flight alcohol you can remain unconscious throughout.

Unless, that is, you're travelling with an infant.

Naturally, the airlines do their best to make everything that little bit worse (I came to the conclusion some time ago that US airlines exist primarily to remind Americans what life would have been like if the Soviets had won the Cold War).

For example: they offer to let children under the age of 2 fly free of charge as “lap passengers” - the suggestion being that your little pumpkin will sit quietly on your knee, cooing and smiling and perhaps every so often clapping his pudgy little hands, while your plane spends 18 hours waiting for a take-off slot at LAX.

This is a fantasy. For a start, my boy does nothing quietly. At present, he makes a noise like a fax transmission being played back through a stack of Marshall amplifiers (it's a marginal improvement on the techno whalesong phase). But the noise is really only 10 per cent of the problem.

It's the in-flight wriggling, punching, kicking and gouging that really gets you down, followed closely by the violent and often unspeakable excretions that are somehow made possible by a diet of oatmeal and peas. And, of course, you must also suffer the knowledge that every other passenger on the aircraft would love nothing more than to throw you and your offspring out of the emergency hatch.

But I've learnt some hard lessons now, and I'm confident things will get better. When my wife and I fly to New York in a fortnight's time, our son will be strapped into his car seat, which will in turn be strapped firmly into his own full-fare airline seat. Sure, it stung to pay $400 for a passenger who could fit into one of the overhead storage bins. But it will be worth every last cent.

Besides, there'll be other compensations. As a fellow father recently pointed out to me: every time I take a flight by myself from now on, I'll essentially get a free upgrade. “You can be stuck in the back row, wedged into a middle seat between two sumo wrestlers,” he told me, “but if your kid's at home, you're flying first class.”

Chris Ayres is the author of Death by Leisure (John Murray, £12.99)

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